Atheists need to assert ourselves! Here's how

15 ways atheists can stand up for rationality (Click on this heading to read more)

Jeffrey Tayler
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Topics: Atheism, Religion, New Atheism, Editor's Picks, Life News
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[...]All of us, without exception, are born knowing nothing of God or gods, and acquire notions of religion solely through interaction with others - or, most often, indoctrination by others, an indoctrination usually commencing well before we can reason. Our primal state is, thus, one of nonbelief. The New Atheists (most prominently Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens) have, in essence, done nothing more than try to bring us back to our senses, to return us to a pure and innate mental clarity. Yet their efforts have generated all manner of controversy. Far outnumbered, and facing a popular mindset according kneejerk respect to men (yes, mostly they are men) of faith - reverends, priests, pastors, rabbis, imams and so on - the New Atheists have by necessity explained their views with zeal, which has often irked the religious, who are accustomed to unconditional deference. Even some nonbelievers who, again thanks to custom, consider religion too touchy a subject to discuss openly have been riled.
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[...]A lot is at stake. Religion is a serious matter, reaching far beyond the pale of individual conscience and sometimes translating into violence, sexism, sexual harassment and assault, and sundry legal attempts to restrict a woman's right to abortion or outlaw it altogether, to say nothing of terrorism and war. Now is the time to act. [...] Most of Europe entered the post-faith era decades ago. Americans need to catch up.
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I propose here a credo for atheists - concrete responses to faith-based affronts, to religious presumption, to what Hitchens called "clerical bullying." [...] The faithful are entitled to their beliefs, of course, but have no inherent right to air them without expecting criticism. Religion should be subject to commonsense appraisal and rational review, as openly discussible as, say, politics, art and the weather. The First Amendment, we should recall, forbids Congress both from establishing laws designating a state religion and from abridging freedom of speech. There is no reason why we should shy away from speaking freely about religion, no reason why it should be thought impolite to debate it, especially when, as so often happens, religious folk bring it up on their own and try to impose it on others.
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Herewith, some common religious pronouncements and how atheists can respond to them.
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1.  "Let's say grace!"
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No, let's not. When you're seated at the family dinner table and a relative suggests clasping hands, lowering heads and thanking the Lord, say "No thanks. I'm an atheist. So I'll opt out." [...]
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2.  "Religion is a personal matter. It's not polite to bring it up."
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[...] Nonbelievers need to further advance the cause of rationality by discussing it openly; doing so, as uncomfortable as it may be at times, will help puncture the aura of sanctity surrounding faith and expose it for what it is.
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3.  "You're an atheist? I feel sorry for you."
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No, please rejoice for me. I fear no hell, just as I expect no heaven. [...]
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4.  "If you're an atheist, life has no purpose."
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A purpose derived from a false premise - that a deity has ordained submission to his will - cannot merit respect. The pursuit of Enlightenment-era goals - solving our world's problems through rational discourse, rather than though religion and tradition - provide ample grounds for a purposive existence. It is not for nothing that the Enlightenment, when atheism truly began to take hold, was also known as the Age of Reason.
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5.  "If you abolish religion, nothing will stop people from killing, raping and looting."

No, killing, raping and looting have been common practices in religious societies, and often carried out with clerical sanction.[...]
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Morality arises out of our innate desire for safety, stability and order, without which no society can function; basic moral precepts (that murder and theft are wrong, for example) antedated religion.[...]
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6.  "Nothing can equal the majesty of God and His creation."
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No need to inject God into this. "Creation" is majestic enough on its own, as anyone who has gazed into the Grand Canyon or the night sky already knows.[...]
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7.  "It is irrational to believe that the world came about without a creator."
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No, it is irrational to infer an invisible omnipotent being from what we see around us.[...]
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8.  "I will pray for you to see the light."
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Not necessary, but do as you like. Abraham Lincoln noted that, "What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree."
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9.  "If you're wrong about God, you go to hell. It's safer to believe."
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Pascal's wager survives even among people who have never heard the name of the 17th-century French philosopher and mathematician. Leaving aside whether blatant self-interest would please a god demanding to be loved unconditionally, which god will save us from hell? The god of Catholicism? Judaism? Islam? Doctrines of all three Abrahamic faiths prohibit entry into paradise for adherents of rival confessions.
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10.  "Religion is of great comfort to me, especially in times of loss. Too bad it isn't for you."
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George Bernard Shaw noted that, "The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality." A few shots of vodka will do for me, and are more to the point.
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[...]
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10.  "As you age and face death, you will come to need religion."

Perhaps in dotage anything is possible, but this turn of events is unlikely. Aging and the prospect of dying by no means enhance the attractiveness of fictitious comforts to come in paradise, or the veracity of malicious myths about hellfire and damnation. Fear and feeblemindedness cannot be credibly pressed into service to support fantastic claims about the cosmos and our ultimate destiny.
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11.  "You have no right to criticize my religious beliefs."

Wrong. Such a declaration aims to suppress free speech and dialogue about a matter influential in almost every aspect of our societies. No one has a right to make unsubstantiated assertions, or vouch for the truthfulness of unsubstantiated assertions on the basis of "sacred" texts, without expecting objections from thinking folk.
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12.  "Jesus was merciful."
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If he existed - and there is still, after centuries of searching, no proof that he did - he was at times a heartless prophet of doom for the sinners he supposedly loved, commanding those who failed to give comfort to the poor to "depart . . . ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."
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13.  "You can't prove there's no God."
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Correct, at least epistemologically speaking. Reasonable atheists, "New" and old, would not argue with this. Richard Dawkins, for example, has told audiences that he is nominally an agnostic, since proving that something does not exist is impossible. He claims to be an atheist "only" in the sense that he is an "a-leprechaunist, an a-fairiest, and an a-pink-unicornist." The evidence for God, fairies and leprechauns, he remarked, "is equally poor."
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14.  "My religion is true for me."
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A soppy, solipsistic and juvenile declaration and cop-out bordering on the delusional and contradicting Christianity and Islam, neither of which recognize the other, and both of which espouse universalist pretensions. You will not find a scientist who will say, "quantum physics is true for me." No one would have trusted Jonas Salk if he had promoted the efficacy of his polio vaccine as "true for him."
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15.  "Don't take everything in the Bible literally."
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Not taking the Bible (or other texts based on "revealed truths") literally leaves it up to the reader to cherry-pick elements for belief. There exists no guide for such cherry-picking, and zero religious sanction for it.
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I'm not counseling incivility - but arm yourself with the courage of your rationalist convictions and go forth. We will all be better off for it.
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Jeffrey Tayler is a contributing editor at The Atlantic. His seventh book, "Topless Jihadis -- Inside Femen, the World's Most Provocative Activist Group," is out now as an Atlantic ebook. Follow @JeffreyTayler1 on Twitter.